There are a lot of features: “3 Hour Drive” features British vocalist Sampha, “Me x 7” finds Philly rapper Tierra Whack doing her best Eartha Kitt impersonation, “Show Me Love” co-stars a smokey Miguel and “So Done” finds Keys and Khalid playful swapping verses. It’s a daring trick, allowing a non-emphasized moment such a powerful place in the melody. By the time she gets to the lonely “Authors of Forever,” Keys allows the soft quiver in her voice to carry the melody. As “Wasted Energy” unfurls with dub guitar flips, samba snaps and sampled squeals, Keys’ finds a curt vocal line in the center of the reggae-riffic swirl to tell a tale of being ignored and unloved (“Too many times you turn a blind eye to how I feel”). The swipe-and-swoosh soul of “Time Machine” finds Keys’ reverb-dripping voice pushed to the back, then given multilayered harmonies, before reaching a synth-bass-filled chorus. “What if I wasn’t Alicia/ Would it please ya?,” she rhymes, giving her the song’s tail end a Badu-esque finale.
On the opener, “Truth Without Love,” a twilight string arrangement opens to Keys rushing her conversation until her chatter becomes slurry and slushy. All this makes Keys’ seventh studio album her best, and finds her easing up on the obvious hooks and pushing the limits of her voice and imagination.\ The spaciousness allows Keys to let her nuanced, versatile voice do the talking like never before. Rather than rely on musical tropes of her past, “Alicia” touches on the sonic frippery of textured sequencers, ambient sound and electro, all while maintaining her usual McCoy Tyner-meets-Laura Nyro-like feel for the piano. “Alicia” goes further, freakier, funkier, quieter and jazzier down that gritty path, with experiments in subtly melodic soul and impressionistic lyrics whose emotions go beyond unsettled romance. It wasn’t exactly Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” but it was as close as Keys had come to standing outside the shadows of silken soul so to see the cracked, funky mess below.
After releasing 2012’s “Girl on Fire,” she grew tired of such perfection, stopped wearing make-up and released “Here,” a raw, unrefined album filled with nervous jazz-R&B-hop and lyrics that looked into the topicality of the environment, poverty and addiction. Alicia Keys spent the first five albums of her career as a sleekly sophisticated singer-songwriter and pianist, crafting anthemic R&B that was often bold but just as often bland.
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